Time-capsule ’78 Ford Fiesta has been driven only 141 miles

After decades in a museum, this 1978 Ford Fiesta goes to auction | H&H Classics photo

Part of a museum display for 37 years, car is headed to auction

Wonderfully preserved cars that were barely driven are all the rage with bidders at collector car actions these days. And it doesn’t really seem to matter where the vehicles were sought after when they were new.

A test case will go to auction February 2 when H&H Classics offers a “time-warp” 1978 Ford Fiesta 950 at its first online auction. The hatchback has been driven only 141 miles, having been displayed or stored at The Science Museum in London from 1980 to 2017.

“This is a highly original and authentic Ford Fiesta, go find another!” contends Damian Jones, head of sales for H&H Classics. “This is truly a one off. It is perhaps the lowest mileage Ford Fiesta MKI existing.”

But is that enough to make it collectible? We’ll find out in February.

H&N notes that the car was delivered to an export-specialist Ford dealership in London but had yet to be sold when the museum acquired it for its Glimses of Medical History gallery, where it was part of a diorama showing technology designed for helping an elderly person in and out of a vehicle. The car remained part of that display until 2015, when the museum revised some exhibits.

Because the museum had replaced its elevators in the meantime, the car was scheduled to be cut into pieces to be removed from the museum.

“Thankfully, Darren Wisdom who was working on site in 2017 intervened and saved the time-warp hatchback by constructing a special jig which allowed it to be rotated through 90 degrees and brought down to ground level (albeit with the drivetrain and interior removed to save weight),” H&H reports.

Wisdom acquired the car from the museum and had the cooling system, brakes, gearbox and other mechanical and safety components maintained so the car could pass Ministry of Transportation testing in the spring of 2018.

Wisdom sold the car in June 2018 for nearly $15,000, and now it’s headed to the auction block.

Steve Purdy

January 26, 2019, 5:08 PM

Mine was a ‘76, I think, and was a daily driver that begged to be driven full throttle everywhere we went. It was the ‘S’ model. Had no trouble wit it but it was loud and rattled like an airport shuttle. Great little, simple car.

I would just go ahead and buy the coffin now. Hell, why not go ahead and lay down in it and get used to it. If you have an accident in this pos they eont be able to peal you out of it. Hunk a junk then, hunk a junk now. My brain cells perished just reading the OBIT on the car- G R O S S

Jeffrey Heller

January 27, 2019, 9:30 AM

Value here has to be based on the use….as the intrinsic value is negligible. The actual collector car / desireability / etc factors virtually non-existent. That it is NOS on something that there is little if any wish for would only justify that all things shoved into storage and held for decades should go up in multiples of their original because they are old(er)….and that simply doesn’t hold. In fact, the opposite does generally….

That said – someone someplace could well do a display of the Vega &/or Chevette (GM) , Gremlin (AMC), Omni/Horizon (Mopar), and of course Pinto (really the Ford car of the class, not the Fiesta here (which was much less common in the US and would be more correctly displayed with the likes of a Yugo)). So why they would pay that much for what is perhaps a great condition (for display) of a not very significant example of the genre makes no sense. It is not a labor of love car, nor a story car – in fact, it’s life was part of a display totally removed from an auto focus in a MEDICAL show!

Dwight Neisler

January 28, 2019, 11:51 AM

I had one i bought used to drive the 60 miles each way to work. It was ok, very easy to work on. I gave it to my 16 year old son as his first car and it served him well, of course he wanted my 1969 442 but the Fiesta kept him out of trouble. We nicknamed it "Bucky" because he had never driven a stick and it took him a while to learn how to use the clutch without the car bucking.